Good point about laundry detergent. I remember in particular Procter&Gamble who was marketing Ariel and Vizir at the same time (in France). Similar packaging, s

Good point about laundry detergent. I remember in particular Procter&Gamble who was marketing Ariel and Vizir at the same time (in France). Similar packaging, same base product, similar pricing. One thing I remember now is that they had (in the 80s-90s) introduced a little ball in which to pour your liquid detergent to put in the middle of your laundry. Both brands had it obviously, so I imagine that made the other brands look like they were lacking something. Instead of having brand A with new unknown feature X, competing with brand B without X feature, you have two brands A1 and A2 with that feature and B without. I'd expect consumer to start thinking "well these two brands have it, so that must be good". Instead of comparing A and B, they're now comparing A1 and A2 instead. Clever. I'm not sure either how well two brands could work for tech/business products, but I wouldn't be surprised if the above example with the specific feature could work a bit: if you're trying a different approach to a problem but bring it through two brands, in a way it validates the approach. (if you don't know better)